#i've seen people talk about how they don't want to define aromanticism as 'lacking' anything | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

leidensygdom · 2 months

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The ways in which being asexual feels isolating

I've been pondering whether to post this or not, but I figured out I wanted to explain a bit of this experience.

So, I could go on a very long tangent on how being asexual is usually a lonely experience, and how much I've been otherized here and there- Specially in real life. How the same people that claimed to be queer (or allies) had been much weirder about my asexuality than they were about me being bi/pan or whatever.

But I think I wanna talk about how something like that bleeds in every aspect of socializing, even down to something like fandom. I stay away from fandom usually- I like to look at cool fanart and that's about it. I hate discourse, I hate drama, I hate reading people getting worked up because they're treating fanon as canon. But there's one thing I've noticed, over and over, that just sends me off my rails.

And it's how fandom tends to treat asexuality (or aromanticism). So, you get a character in some piece of media that explicitly, unequivocally, states they're either ace, aro, or both. "I do not have interest in a partner", "I don't desire to have sex nor do I enjoy the topic", whatever. And as an ace person, I do appreciate being able to see myself in media- There isn't many chases where something is established that bluntly.

Now, you decide you want to check some fanart for that. Fandoms have this tendency to make absolutely everything about shipping, even when the media they're basing it in does not revolve about that (and it's annoying, because a lot of times people aren't interested in the actual themes- It's all reduced to shipping). Suddenly, you notice people treating the aforementioned character as anything but aro or ace. It's all about shipping. "This person interacted with this other person in a way two friends would, but we gotta make this their entire personality now". Some people may instead go for "well, maybe the character is not having sex, but they're probably an absolute freak about it, studies it extensively, has encyclopedic knowledge about it-"

Now, there's of course sex-favourable aces, and that's completely valid, but it's already straying from what, canonically, the character had mentioned. Asexual or aromantic characters aren't really allowed to exist as themselves. People often see them as a blank slate to fill, to change, to fix. I could talk forever about how people react to real life aces like that. I've had people asking me incredibly invasive questions because they saw my lack of sexual attraction as something broken, something they could fix.

And I hate that! I think I'm allowed to say that I hate that! It's hard and unusual for media to cement an aro/ace character, because they're defined by the lack of interest for something, which is often hard to show. But when it does- No one seems to care. It's all shipping, it's all "well, he's gay in denial", "well, she's probably super repressed". If you took a canonically gay character and made them straight on a fanfic, you'd get angry people. Which is bound to happen when you erase representation that people identify with. But aro/ace characters are NOT even seen as queer, they're not even seen as "representation" by most people. You can erase that bit of it, put some god awful shipping on top, and people will applaud you. And it sucks!

I wish people would see being aro or ace as an identity worth respecting, not an identity that needs overwriting. It feels a bit too close to how people often treat aro/aces irl, and it sucks. It reeks of this sort of exclusionism, where "aro/aces are technically queer but it's queer lite at best, it's less interesting than being gay, and we kinda don't want them near us anyhow". Again, I've had far worse experiences about being ace than I have about not being straight.

Sorry if the post got long, but I hope this experience may at least resonate with other people who have been struggling with this, too. It has always felt just kind of lonely to be ace, and see how little people do even consider it an identity, even when it comes down to something like fandom.

#lgbt #lgbtq #asexual #asexuality #aromantism #aro #ace #aroace #aromanticism #queer #long post

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the-ace-lesbians · 10 months

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Bi lesbian doesn't mean what that answer to that ask says though, that would be bad. Bi lesbian is biromantic homosexual which if homoromantic asexuals exist follows logically. Not saying you have to be comfortable with it, I'm still untangling my feelings on it, but it's important to have information when you're talking about these things. As an ace its weirdly close to the 'if you're asexual you can't be gay because your romantic attraction and sexual attraction have to be the same' argument to be entirely comfortable.

I have a lot of thoughts but tl;dr

The SAM shouldn't be used outside of aspec identities, I respect people who identify as bi lesbians but I'm not gonna be social with them, and I feel like the main difference in 'if you're ace you can't be gay' and 'lesbians can't be bisexual' is that gayness does not require sexual attraction, but lesbianism does require no attraction to men.

I maintain that the split attraction model could and should not be used outside of asexuality. It just doesn't work outside of sexuality because it was made specifically to define an identity including a lack of allosexuality or alloromanticism, where you can lack sexual attraction but have romantic attraction to, say women. The SAM works for aces and aros because asexuality and aromanticism do not contradict with queer identity, but benefits in more correctly defining yourself can be had from a modifier being used such as 'biromantic' or 'homoromantic' instead of simply 'bisexual' or 'homosexual'

Issue is, the foundation of being a lesbian is not including men and loving women. Bisexual and lesbian, while of course we share similar attractions and love and experiences, contradict each other if used together to explain a single identity, because one specifically requires the absence of attraction to men. To me, using the SAM to say you're a biromantic woman but you only like women sexually just feels like internalized comphet to an extreme degree - everything about a lot of it (of course not all and not every definition because it's a nuanced discussion) just feels like comphet to me.

Outside of that, the answer from that ask is absolutely one of the many different meanings to the term 'bi lesbian'. I've never even seen it applied to biromantic homosexuals, only bisexual sapphics who don't want to use the term bisexual sapphic.

I've seen plenty of people say other meanings, but the main one I see is people using it instead of bisexual sapphic or any other term we have specifically to avoid including men in lesbianism. It's a label that has an incredible amount of meanings, and it's definitely different to everyone who uses it or talks about it. There is no defining meaning.

I think, personally, the conversation is still different from the aphobic things people say - Primarily because gay doesn't specify sexual or romantic attraction. Like I said above, asexuality does not contradict anything about a lesbian identity. Lesbianism about loving other sapphics and only other sapphics - a loose definition because gender is so strange and confusing, but we can at least all agree that women.

It was absolutely acephobic and arophobic rhetoric that guided the OG hatred and aphobia we saw in the queer community, and it still is, but the reason that it's wrong to say we can't be gay and ace is because we literally, by definition, can be. Gayness and queer love isn't defined by sex, you know?

I do hear how it can sound too similar, and in the beginning that was a big reason I didn't have any opinion. I think the main difference is that in this, one of the labels used is quite literally defined by the lack one thing that the other has.

Even then, I'm not going to campaign against people identifying with the label bi lesbian, and I'd protect them if they needed help, they're still my queer siblings even if I don't particularly feel comfortable with the way they're labeling themselves because that's genuinely just none of my business, and my feelings don't mean anything about their identity!

And, in turn, their identity and feelings have no effect on my identity because I'm always going to consider lesbianism something devoid of men and attraction to men, that's sort of the whole point of it.

I also feel the need to say that I am actively reading more into this because I do want to know more! I have a lot of thoughts, and my main one tends to be that labels evolve and change with time and old definitions shouldn't be gospel while new definitions deserve to change, but at the same time some definitions sort of just... can't be changed.

Just as well, side note, another reason I dislike the term bi lesbian is because I have also seen it used by TERFs to describe sapphics dating trans women or sapphics who have had relationships with men, and I feel like if your label is used for transphobic and hateful purposes maybe we should all use the regular terms we had to describe this identity like 'sapphic' or 'sapphic bisexual' or literally just 'bisexual' because bisexuals aren't inherently going to date multiple genders and bisexuality is a beautiful word and identity with a beautiful history but idk I am definitely biased because I love bisexuals so much

#long post #deerly beloved #discussion #cannot cannot CANNOT stress enoguh #that it does not matter. ill talk about it on my side blog but the majority of the time i am not even thinking about this #i wont be friends with someone actively identifying as a bi lesbian because that's not something i think id be comfortable with #knowing i define my lesbianism as a love for women that doesnt include men #and therefore feel like our ideals would just class too much for comfort you know #but also like. we are all queer siblings. we all need to love each other. i can say 'idk i think it's odd' on tumblr but there's legislatio #trying to kill us so at the same time i'm going to fight for anyones right to call themself a bi lesbian and use whatever name and pronoun #and labels they want because queerness is good and it deserves to be confusing

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